


(Mis)Trust

by seekingsquake



Series: If Seeing Is Believing Then Believe That We Have Lost Our Minds [5]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Gen, I don't watch Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D., Phil is alive, Pre-Iron Man 3, and everything is terrible, but he is the bearer of bad news, no one can trust anyone, not compliant with Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D., so I'd be very surprised if it ended up actually be compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-13
Updated: 2014-09-13
Packaged: 2018-02-17 05:14:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2297828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingsquake/pseuds/seekingsquake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're telling me that SHIELD will fall, essentially."<br/>"Yes."<br/>"How do you know?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Mis)Trust

**Author's Note:**

> I am not affiliated with Marvel in any way, shape, or form. But I do own a Hawkeye action figure that can't hold his bow properly.  
> Please do not repost or reupload this piece anywhere without consent. If you ask, I'm sure we can work something out :]

Coulson looks at him from the other end of his sagging couch with eyes that didn’t used to look so tired and a sort of weathered set to his shoulders. He looks older, but so does Clint, so maybe it doesn’t matter. Neither man says anything for a long while, blue eyes staring unwaveringly into blue eyes. Eventually it is Coulson that breaks the silence between them, just like old times.

“It was never your fault, Agent, and I’m sorry that we couldn’t tell you the truth before now.”

“Why are you here?” It’s not the first thing Clint wants to say after nearly four months of silence, and definitely not the first thing he thought he’d say when his biggest regret literally came back from the dead, but it’s what crawls out of his throat anyway. He probably should have started with _what happened_ or _I’m sorry_ or _thank you for not being dead._ Instead he says, “Why are you here?” and then after a moment follows that up with, “I’m really fucking pissed at you.”

A very small, lopsided half smile breaks itself over Coulson’s lips, a little chapped, a little thinner than Clint remembers. His shoulders shift minutely, and he looks far less unflappable than he did when Clint was young and brash and the rowdiest asset in SHIELD. “Agent Barton. You have every right to be angry with me. But this is important. I have a job for you.”

Clint searches Coulson’s face before closing his eyes and slumping back against the lumpy couch cushion. He is exhausted and defeated. He doesn’t recall fighting anything, but he knows he’s been beaten. “I haven’t passed my psych evals, Sir. I can’t do fieldwork.”

“It’s good this assignment isn’t fieldwork.”

Clint’s gaze snaps to his (former?) handler and it’s a little cold, a little confused, a little angry. “I’m only good for fieldwork, Sir, and I’m not even good for that right now. What could SHIELD possibly have for me to do? What could they even think of trusting me with?”

If Phil Coulson had been a normal man, there might have been pain in his eyes. Maybe a little regret. But he wasn’t a normal man. Phil Coulson was an agent of SHIELD, had trained and mentored a handful of the organization's best and brightest, had cultivated loyalty and a fierce fighting spirit in his charges. He knew what was needed to get Barton restarted, and the regret, the sympathy, the apologies were not it. “I need you to stay underground.”

Clint was off the couch and across the room in an instant, stalking along the length of the back wall with tension in his arms so prominent it looked on the verge of painful.

“Listen to me, Barton,” Phil demanded quietly before Clint could work himself into distress. “Listen. Something is happening. Something all encompassing and very dangerous. The people you care about are going to be targeted. Romanoff. Fury. The Avengers. Hill. Me. You. It is going to happen slowly. You cannot go to anyone’s aid. The job you are being given is to keep yourself alive at all costs. Your job is to trust that everyone else will do the same, and not trust anyone at all. I don’t care who contacts you, you do not respond. Understood? Do. Not. Respond.”

“But Sir--,”

“Clint.”

And there it is. Clint couldn’t fight against Coulson’s voice around the hard consonants and sharp edges of his name. He couldn’t fight against the desperation in Coulson’s hands that he’d been trained to see, and then trained to overlook. He couldn’t fight against the fact that all he wanted was for someone to still see something good and shining and new in him, because God knew he didn’t see anything like that in himself. Hadn’t, even when Phil had picked him up and brought him in, but at least then he could have been convinced that maybe it was there. Now he just needed to believe that Phil still saw what he did all those years ago. So he nodded. “Understood.” He wondered how long ago he’d taken the phrase _do not trust anyone at all_ to mean _do not trust anyone except Phil_. But then... “What about Romanoff?”

“She can handle herself.”

“I know that Sir, but--,”

“I don’t know.”

Over the last few months, Clint had figured that he couldn’t ever be more scared, couldn’t ever be more hurt, couldn’t ever lose more than he already had. Apparently he was wrong. Coulson’s hesitance and uncertainty about where Natasha stood, about where they (because Clint and Coulson would always be _they_ , even more than Clint and Natasha would always be they) stood on Natasha, was the worst thing that Clint had never prepared himself for.

All those years ago, when Clint had brought a little Russian redhead back to base instead of letting an arrow fly through her skull, Coulson had looked at him with a sharp sort of appraisal. He had said, “Make me believe that you did the right thing,” and that was all Clint had needed.

It took a long time. Months of dismantling and rewiring Natasha’s inner workings, months of trying to make her believe that no, nobody here is going to hurt you, no, you don’t have to go back there, yes, we think you can help people instead of hurt them, yes, I spared you against my orders. And just when Clint was about to give up, just when he was about to go to Coulson and Fury and admit that he fucked up, he made a bad call, she literally keeps trying to kill him every time he turns his back on her for more than a minute, she surprised him. She caught his wrist in her deceptively slender fingers and pulled him close to her, her gaze boring into him all cold and controlled.

She said, “Who are you trying to turn me into?”

And he had said, “Yourself.”

She had looked at him, just looked at him, for a very long time after that. She was searching, probing him for something, but he didn’t know what. Eventually she let him go, practically throwing him across the room. Then she said, “I... think I would like that,” and Clint knew. He knew he’d broken through to her somehow. He rushed to Coulson’s office and verbally vomited all over him.

“Do you believe her?”

“I do, Sir. I really do.”

And Coulson had nodded, and that had been that. Natasha had somehow become Tash and they had become an unstoppable team and Coulson had looked over them with a fierce protectiveness and a remarkable amount of faith, and Clint had figured that he’d have that until he died on the job somewhere.

But then Coulson had died, and Tash had gone to DC and Clint had fallen apart.

And then Coulson had come back, and for five minutes Clint had thought that he could have back everything he lost. But that was five minutes of peace that he wishes he hadn’t been given, because he wasn’t allowed to trust Tash anymore and it felt like he was being shredded all over again.

Maybe it’s because he hasn’t slept properly in three weeks. Maybe it’s because he had an encounter with a mind controlling alien god. Maybe it’s because the one woman he’s ever trusted abandoned him without a fight. Maybe it’s because he spent four months convinced that the man in front of him was dead, and that it was his fault. Maybe it was a little bit of all of those things, but for some reason, very suddenly, Clint feels his body go cold with dread. He looks right at Coulson and he isn’t sure anymore if it’s actually Coulson, or if Coulson isn’t somehow being remotely controlled from somewhere else, or if this is all some sort of fucked up breakage of his psyche. “Sir,” he says, fighting to keep the tremble out of his voice, “you’re telling me that SHIELD will fall, essentially.”

“Yes,” is the answer that he gets, and it sends chills throughout his limbs, right down into his fingers and toes. “And I don’t want you to be there when it does.”

“How do you know?” But Coulson stands, makes for the door, and doesn’t say another word. Clint can’t stand it, feels like he’s going crazy. “Phil, how do you know?”

Coulson pauses, but doesn’t turn. His voice is soft, and Clint can picture the look on the other man’s face as he says, “Remember what I’ve told you. I’ll see you on the other side.” Then he leaves the apartment, and Clint is left standing alone, with not even anything to prove to himself that Phil Coulson had ever even been there in the first place.


End file.
